The system failed California shooter

Published on Wednesday, 28 May 2014 22:24 - Written by

Itâ€™s often hard to know when Salon.com is just trolling (thatâ€™s internet-speak for publishing an outrageous article just to get responses) or is being serious. Salonâ€™s writers have claimed in the past that the 2013 government shutdown was racially motivated, and demanded that good liberal parents â€śsacrificeâ€ť their own children by keeping them in failing public schools.

But now it has taken the â€śwhite privilegeâ€ť craze too far, and claims that last weekendâ€™s tragedy in Santa Barbara was due to â€śwhite guy killer syndrome.â€ť

Cooper continues, â€śAnother young white guy has decided that his disillusionment with his life should become somebody elseâ€™s problem. On Saturday, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger (who, as many commenters have pointed out, had a white father and mother of Asian descent) went on a killing spree on the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara, murdering his three roommates, shooting women outside a sorority house, and hitting people with his car as he attempted to get away from police.â€ť

Of course the incident was a tragedy. But she goes on to blame it on race and wealth and â€śprivilege.â€ť

â€śWe cannot understand Elliot Rodgerâ€™s clear mental health issues and view of himself as the supremely forsaken victim here outside a context of racism, white supremacy and patriarchy,â€ť she claims. â€śIâ€™m also saying that white male privilege might be considered a mental health issue, because it allows these dudes to move through the world believing that their happiness, pleasure and well-being matters more than the death and suffering of others. This is madness.â€ť

Of course it is. Itâ€™s also madness to blame â€śwhite male privilege,â€ť and to take the focus off very real mental health issues.

The point here is that every country and every culture has had murderers and mass murderers.

Salon and Cooper do a disservice by trying to portray birth (birth as a white male) as a mental issue. Thatâ€™s because there are real mental issues here, issues that werenâ€™t addressed adequately by those involved in Rodgerâ€™s life.

As CBS News reports, â€śSheriffâ€™s deputies visited Rodger three weeks before the attack after his troublesome Internet posts had spurred relatives to contact a social worker, who contacted police. Rodger was able to convince the officers he was not a threat.â€ť

Sheriff Bill Brown said on Saturday, â€śHe was able to make a very convincing story that there was no problem, that he wasnâ€™t going to hurt himself or anyone else.â€ť

There were other visits in recent years that ended similarly.

The fact is that the system failed Elliot Rodger. Letâ€™s talk about that.